


an after credits scene, if you will

by youngerdrgrey



Series: shouldn't we be the epicenter of black life on this campus? [1]
Category: Dear White People (TV)
Genre: Gen, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 04:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10756572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youngerdrgrey/pseuds/youngerdrgrey
Summary: Sam has some things to process too, post-Defamationviewing and everything else.spoilers, obviously





	an after credits scene, if you will

**Author's Note:**

> I'm glad we get to see more of these iterations of the DWP!crew. Definitely want a lot more though. I have a lot of questions and a lot of hopes, but I'll try not to let the hopes run too far.

 

/

And it’s after _Defamation_ , after everyone’s cleared out and Sam and Coco wind up walking the halls back towards their rooms. After un-muting and then re-muting all of her Twitter notifications that Sam stops walking and just turns to Coco. Sam turns with her palms out but her hands still way too close to her sides for her to be as casual as she wishes she could be.

“Can we just…?” She doesn’t know — can they just pretend for a second? Pretend they’re still friends and still the people that they turn to when shit goes sideways? When the guy that they both sort of needed to exist in their crappy amazing school is suddenly the only one locked up? When every thought about his privilege needing to save him rages against the very real possibility that nothing around here is ever going to change for the better? Sam just — she might need to pretend, for a minute or two.

Coco lifts a shoulder in a shrug. She even rolls her eyes before starting, “Dear white people, just because some people are screaming doesn’t mean you have to start screaming too.” She scoffs, and the whites of her eyes pop as the bass slips into her voice for a second. “We get it. You have problems too. But your problems are playing on every TV station, radio station, and podcast throughout the world. Give someone else a chance sometimes.”

Sam smiles. Her mouth cracks open for a ‘thank you,’ but her throat closes up a bit at the thought of actually saying it. So, instead, she says, “Dear white people, you can pretend that the fairest and the finest of black folk are yours to own as much as you’d like, but eventually, they all show their true colors.” Like the Dean, whose tear stained cheeks will taunt Sam for months to come, for sure. But maybe this is what they need. She can swing by his office once Troy’s out, once he’s gotten a moment to grieve and console the fact that he couldn’t brainwash his own son into being anything other than who Troy was meant to be. She can try to get him to defend AP, to convince the donors that spaces like Armstrong Parker give the black kids somewhere to go so they don’t get caught up in anything else. Or something.

“Dear white people,” Coco preens for a beat, full on pops one of her own curls, “yes, this is all me. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

Sam corrects her, “Just because you don’t see _us_.” They’re still very real. Full, complete people who have a whole world of bullshit to navigate within themselves and nowhere near enough energy to also deal with the bullshit coming from everywhere else.

But she digresses. (She wants to digress.) (She needs to.) Honestly, they’re supposed to be having fun. Having a conversation with an audience who only hears the term of address and rarely anything else unless she says it with a smile and enough platitudes around it that she doesn’t seem threatening. And that’s still so weird — that’s a thing that she’s always wanted to express, how absolutely fucking weird it is that she’s barely over five feet and somehow she is still threatening to so many people. That she’s only palatable when she’s infallible and spritely. That her own people only want her around when she can serve their greater purpose and that some of them don’t know what to do with her when she doesn’t dedicate every aspect of her being to being that person for them. No, not a person; an idol, a figurehead. How is she any better than Troy?

Sam rolls her shoulders back. Grinds out, “Dear white people, you don’t have a monopoly on dehumanization. You might do a damn good job of reducing everyone and everything around you to property cards like Park and Broadway, but we all have a way of seeing only what we want."

Coco barely breathes after that. She says, “Like?” But the word’s nothing more than a link for Sam’s sentence, a bridge for her thoughts that have the both of them rooted in the middle of the hall on a Wednesday night.

But how is Sam supposed to keep going? How does she string together more words for people that are literally nowhere around? And how many times does she have to use the phrase ‘dear white people’ before she’s required to recognize the little internalized part of her that needs these reminders too? Maybe not all of them, but some. She needs a lot of reminders.

Like, Dear Sam White, you can laugh all you want about Olive and the president in _Defamation_ but it won't fix your own tragic love life. Or, Dear Sam White, making jokes about your blackness does not stop those who look at you and question its legitimacy. Dear Sam White, fucking one of your best friends will always ruin everything, even if you’re both sad and yearning and he’s everything you’re supposed to want in a man. Dear Sam, you can write as many one-sided letters as you want but until you respond to these ones from yourself? Yeah, you’re not going to actually do any good for anyone.

“Sam?” Coco stares at her — at Sam — with the softness that gets locked away under picture perfect smiles and practiced precision. With the same care that went into freshman year YouTube spirals on how to do perfect pompadours and dumb product hauls that cost more than either of them would ever willingly, willfully spend on curl defining cremes and conditioners. The same amount of love that apparently still exists, after two years of petty bullshit and not nearly enough of anything else.

Sam’s voice cracks on the first word. “Dear white people,” Coco’s secret shame was hating them, and Sam’s hated so many for so long. Hated yet nurtured them. Poked at them for the sake of reminding them that she is not the only one at the sleepover and not the only one who hates feeling like the motherfucking only one whenever she doesn’t just grin and bear it and tamp down on the parts of her that make her feel whole and home. Goodness fuck! “I’ve missed…” growing up with other black friends that she chose for herself, and getting to go through college with this black friend in front of her who she picked before she even knew she really was. “I miss my friend. And I never would’ve had her without AP.” And Sam taps a foot into the ground to try and quell the tears building in her eyes, and she glances away, but they slip out regardless of how composed she wishes she could be. And Coco doesn’t rear back, or hide away, or search for some distance. Coco’s not telling her that they won’t work out like Gabe did, or ignoring her like Reggie is, or-or whatever it is that Jo’s doing now. “And I don’t know if I'm doing anything right anymore. So it’d just be really appreciated, white people, if you could stop fucking up long enough for me to get my own shit back together.”

Coco laughs. One sharp crack of joy before she tamps it back down. “I’m sorry. I am. Really, I feel you, and you’ve got the music video tears going down your cheeks but—“ another laugh “—sweets, when did you ever have your shit together?”

Sam shoves Coco’s shoulders with a “Really, bitch?” But it’s enough to break the cloud a bit. Enough to get her smiling too.

“I’m just saying, freshman year to now, only real difference are better clothes.”

“You know what, I’m taking the compliment and ignoring the rest,” Sam says.

Coco shrugs. “You know what they say about ignorance.”

Sam rolls her eyes. Her phone jumps in her pocket. She tugs it out to a new message from Reggie.

**Reggie to Sam // 10:34pm  
** // It’ll take some getting used to, but hey we been through worse.  
// my sister

Progress, right? Maybe their friendship can be fixed.

**Reggie to Sam // 10:35pm  
** // So about your boy Troy, I got an idea.

Sam smiles. Time just keeps on moving, doesn’t it? Nothing much they can do but find the little moments and keep on moving with it. She tucks her phone back into her pocket and turns to face the hall. “Is ignorance what keeps the people in Florida from recognizing the bleach? Or is that the whole labels thing?”

Coco strolls down the hall with her. “People in Florida drinking bleach now?”

Sam’s turn to laugh. “And you call me ignant.”

“You are.”

“I’m woke. App official and everything.”

“It’s a stupid app.”

“If it’s stupid why do you care?”

“' _If it’s stupid why do you care?’”_

Sam rolls her eyes. “Okay, real mature. See, this is why I moved out.”

“‘Cause you don’t know how to have fun?” Coco taunts.

“Oh, I can have fun.” Just maybe, not while Troy’s still in holding. Tomorrow works. After they’ve had a little time to process. It’s a lot for a day, like a whole ten chapters worth.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> any thoughts? on this? the show? the universe at large?


End file.
